KELLER WILLIAMS BRINGS THE DEAD TO LIFE ON ‘GRATEFUL GRASS LIVE AT THE BLUEGRASS HALL OF FAME AND MUSEUM’
Keller Williams is on every episode of The High Note whether he knows it or not – his is one of the voices you hear at the end of each show. So it felt right that he’s the guest for Episode 50, returning to the podcast for the first time since his “Shut the Folk Up and Listen” tour with Steve Poltz, still one of my favorite conversations I’ve ever recorded.
Keller is back because he has a new album that just came out: “Keller Williams’ Grateful Grass Live at the Bluegrass Hall of Fame and Museum,” released Tuesday, July 21. The 10-song live set was recorded in Owensboro, Kentucky, during the farewell weekend of the museum’s “Jerry Garcia: A Bluegrass Journey” exhibit, and it opens with one of my favorite songs, “Cold Rain and Snow.”
He’s coming to Atlantic City July 30 at Anchor Rock Club.
Keller records every show, but this one earned a release. He told me the room was acoustically perfect and the crowd – a mix of bluegrass lovers and Deadheads, often within the same person – was the ideal audience for what Grateful Grass is: Keller, in his words, “taking great liberties with Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia music.”
The album also captures a first. Keller had never performed with Lindsay Lou before that weekend, and the song they landed on came straight off the set list – she spotted “Eyes of the World,” they went for it, and the risk paid off with one of the record’s standout moments.
We talked about why the Dead’s music hits even harder stripped down – for Keller, it’s the rawness, and the idea that less can be more. It’s fitting, since an acoustic record, “Reckoning,” is what hooked him on the Dead as a teenager. From there we traced his bluegrass lineage: discovering The Seldom Scene as a kid near Fredericksburg, hearing songs he recognized reimagined in bluegrass, and Old & In the Way – Jerry on banjo – sealing the deal.
The current Grateful Grass core grew out of Pettygrass, his Tom Petty project with The Hillbenders. Gary Rea holds down bass, his cousin Jimmy Rea plays guitar and Chad “Gravy” Graves handles dobro and banjo, with rotating guests joining along the way – which brings us to Atlantic City.
Keller Williams’ Grateful Grass featuring Tim Carbone of Railroad Earth plays Anchor Rock Club on Thursday, July 30. Keller played AC back in the House of Blues days and loves the Monopoly-board lights of it all, and he told me exactly what the crowd can expect: Grateful Dead songs played nothing like the Grateful Dead plays them, plenty of singing along, and “a poser mando player living his best life.” Carbone, he said, brings virtuosity and a more symphonic take on the fiddle – plus a beautiful voice.
Before the final questions, Keller shared his Dead origin story: his first show at the Capital Centre in Landover, Maryland, in 1987, the education he got from the traveling city in the parking lot, and a vivid memory of the wind swirling the sound around JFK Stadium in Philadelphia in 1989 – a show where, listening back, he can almost hear Jerry smiling. And his favorite song the Dead covered? A pull I never saw coming: Bruce Hornsby’s “The Valley Road.”
There’s plenty more in the episode, including the albums he’s proudest of that he never pushed – “Droll,” his instrumental collaboration with Gibb Droll, and “Perps” – plus a pipeline of unreleased records that means new Keller music for years to come. Oh, and his favorite color. You’ll just have to listen.
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Paul “Dawg” Dixon wrote, composed and recorded the intro and outro music. The voices you hear at the end are Graeme Armstrong, Steve Poltz and Keller Williams.
